I had a booth at a small event to represent my business. I had prepared a web-based game for people to play to win a prize. I had it running on a PC mirrored on a TV so I could do my work on my Mac separately between visitors.

During a speaker’s presentation, someone bored with it came up to my booth and I introduced her to the game. She started playing it but the sound was up too loud and drew attention to her. I quickly used volume key on the top row, but nothing happened. So I thought the fn key needed to be pressed and held to change the volume. Nope. Then I thought I’ll just use the volume control in the dock. But the browser was full screen, and when I tried to quickly change that, some other unknown thing happened and some other stupid MS configuration screen filled the screen. She gave up trying to play at that point and I felt super stupid.

When did it become so hard to use Windows machines and software? I’ve been on a Mac for about 8 years now and using this Windows laptop just feels ridiculous to me. Like some broken toy that came from a bargain bin at a dollar store. The whole thing feels cheap and like it’ll break in half if I twist it accidentally. Other Windows laptops I look at in the stores occasionally just don’t measure up in build quality. Like the companies know you’ll get max 2 years useful life and throw it away.

I meant to upload this Reddit post from r/TrueOffMyChest as an image, but apparently that feature is broken. So I transcribed it. This rant writes itself. It's absolutely discrimination and by consent of the state. This, plus age and viewpoint discrimination, is why I own and operate my own business. I refuse to be beholden to HR assclowns trying to virtue signal their way into their next promotion.

"So I did an experiment, I work in CS and decided to test what the gender bias is. So I took my CV And changed the name to a female name. I'd send it out with my real name, then a few days later (or few days before) with a female name.

Out of 100, my applications with a male name got 7 responses for interview.

Out of 100, my applications with a female name got 45 responses to interview

The female resume was 650% more likely to get a callback. And the resumes were identical.

So then I thought 'what about someone looking for working class jobs?' So I decided to focus on restaurants-servers, hosting, etc. Made a fake resume, and responded to craigslist ads with both male and female names. Sometimes the male went first, sometimes the female went first.

Out of 100, my applications with a male name got 10 responses to interview

Out of 100, my applications with a female name got 87 responses to interview

The female resume got 870% more responses."

Watching someone at a conference trying to play a video in their presentation on Windows PowerPoint. It’s painful to see. No audio. They then ripped the video from YouTube. It still wouldn’t play even in Windows Media Player. They’re still fiddling with it while the speaker and audience trade dad jokes. If I hooked up my Mac it would immediately work. How do Windows users live like this?

Had to change my dog in my profile. The little black dog died, and I'm grieving pretty hard over it. One dog left, and that's it for me after he's gone. I can't say goodbye to any more puppers.

This really resonated with me. The last job I had before doing my work as a full-time independent freelancer had all sorts of infantilization strategies. Parties, nerf gun wars, big lunch once a week, etc. I'm introverted and all of that stuff sapped my mental energy for the day, so my productivity suffered. It's daycare for adults.

https://nmn.gl/blog/...

I needed to do some brainstorming for a starting point to connect Monday.com to some middleware so I can send assets in Monday.com to another server for providing status reports to non-Monday.com users. So, I fired up Anthropic Claude 3.7 Sonnet and asked it to give me some ideas of where to begin. It seems to have done really well stubbing out some starter code and a basic architecture for this system. Except for one thing. The system architecture diagram. Anyone know this language?

The evolution of website navigation.

Seven more years until I retire.

It's easy getting these two mixed up when the trouble starts...

Or, why there are no web developer billionaires

CrowdStrike came down to an untended, uncaught Null pointer that could have been caught with basic code review and testing before push. That is all. https://x.com/Perpetualmaniac/...

Stayed up until 2am launching a website for a client. Now I’m up too early in the morning and can’t sleep anymore. I feel like shit. I’m too old for late night work.

Filling out IRS forms using the Brave browser in privacy mode:
---------
Access Denied
You don't have permission to access "http://sa.www4.irs.gov/modiein/...?" on this server.
Reference #18.cfc3117.1714401007.25a9c99f

https://errors.edgesuite.net/18.cfc...
---------
Filling it out using ridiculously non-secure regular Chrome browser which exposes bookmarks, history, and cookies to anyone with enough knowledge:

"Right this way, sir. Don't worry, your data is in safe hands. We're totally not mining your data for leverage against you for your political leanings in a future tax audit."

Windows is THE STUPIDEST FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT OS ON THE PLANET! All I wanted to do was hook up an HP Spectre laptop running Win11 to a Vizio 60 inch TV. Every time I try to do this it's a crapshoot as to whether it will work. Sometimes, it comes right up as a duplicated display. Not tonight! It flashes for a second and shows the duplicated display, and then it disconnects. EVERY tutorial says use Win + P to select the display mode and it just doesn't fucking work. I've even gone as far as editing the registry to try to make Windows forget old settings. This is BASIC functionality at the end of 2023 and Microsoft FUCKS IT UP! THIS is why I use Linux/MacOS. Because those work every time.

I mean, what’s not to trust? I’m sure it’s virtually secure and private.

I have a bunch of text files from writing that I did in a copy of DOS software called WordPublisher from 1992. When I open them in TextEdit or Sublime on a Mac, there are a bunch of special characters, some of the readable text, and then more special characters. The software just doesn't exist anywhere in any format now. Anyone know how I can recover the full text from a file like that?

So, let me get this straight. At a company called OpenAI, which has the mission of making AI available to the world, the CEO was fired (then rehired, then fired, then rehired) and all the employees stood in solidarity with him through all that. But then there was this new AGI development that the supposedly open company is hiding from everyone and which could threaten the existence of humanity. Because OpenAI is open and is very concerned about AI's existential threats. Except when it's not because it's concerned with AI's existential threats.

Did I get that about right?

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/...

This is about the best blog post describing exactly how the tech industry works. Or doesn't work, as it were.

"I Accidentally Saved Half A Million Dollars"
https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/...

How far back do you remember of the things exhibited in this “museum” of the Internet?

https://neal.fun/internet-artifacts...

For me, it’s mostly stuff beginning at or a little before 1992.

I found ostream’s dream car!

https://facebook.com/reel/...

(Sorry it’s a Facebook Reel, tho.)

I recently deleted a bunch of bookmarks from between 2002 and 2014. None of the websites even worked anymore.

Good a way as any to explain these…

I want to torture very painfully anyone who uses Word to send me content expecting that their exact formatting can just be copy/pasted into any old CMS or web page quickly and easily because the press release is going out NOW and I only got this to you NOW so just quick copy/paste it onto the website and we're good to go, right? You can do that, right?

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! I CANNOT! AND YOU LEFT TRACK CHANGES ON WHICH CARRIES OVER SPECIAL CHARACTERS THAT I HAVE TO REMOVE BY HAND BECAUSE MICROSOFT HIDES OR HAS REMOVED THE ABILITY TO TURN OFF TRACK CHANGES IN SHARED DOCUMENTS! AND YOU INCLUDED TABLES, WHICH I HAVE TO REBUILD BY HAND OR TURN INTO LISTS! YOU WENT TO UNIVERSITY AND NOBODY EVER TOLD YOU THAT YOU CAN'T PASTE DIRECTLY FROM WORD TO A WEBSITE AND HAVE EVERYTHING LOOK EXACTLY AS IT DID IN WORD? WHAT ARE YOU SOME KIND OF MORON?! IT'S BEEN OVER 30 YEARS SINCE THE WEB WAS INVENTED AND YOU STILL HAVEN'T FIGURED THIS OUT?!

At least I get to bill more time.

I'm genuinely curious: Is there anyone here who is offended by the use of the name 'master' for a Git repository 'main' branch? If we all moved to 'main' and never used 'master' again (for anything, Git or not) would that make a difference to you?

We are not family.

Been working long hours and 6-day weeks for not much gain these days. At this rate, I think I will likely end up poor after working myself toward an early grave. My retirement fund actually looks kinda nice when combined with family wealth inherited or that may be inherited sometime in the next 20 years. But the high taxation that’s coming, inflation, and public debt problems that will feed inflation spirals will way more than halve my net worth by the time I am old enough to retire. At that point, I won’t be suicidal but I will be praying to die before I run out of money. From what I see of the local homeless population we try to help, being dead is preferable to sleeping on the street.

If this isn't reality, I don't know what is. I don't read job descriptions today the same way I did 27 years ago.

New thing I'm going to put on my resume and website when people want to know about my reputation in the industry: I am highly sought-after by hundreds of recruiters from India. I get at least three calls per day from someone there. ;)

I just burped out loud on a live call with about 30 people and I thought my mic was muted.

Don’t be cynical and prideful. Respect people older than you in the profession, even if in your judgment they are “dinosaurs”. Even if they’re not as well-versed in what you consider “The New Shiny Thing”, they’ve seen some shit and can teach you a thing or two.